No Self, No Problem summary

Back in the 1960s, a handful of patients underwent a radical and experimental surgery. Each had their corpus callosum severed. The corpus callosum is the thick bundle of fibers that connects the right brain to the left brain, allowing each side to communicate with the other. The surgery served its purpose, successfully reducing the severity of the patients’ epileptic seizures. But it also provided scientists with a group of people whose left and right brains were no longer in constant communication.

The work with these “split-brain” patients enabled researchers, for the first time in history, to completely isolate the functions of each side of the brain. A clear understanding of how these two sides work – and particularly how the left brain works – is crucial to understanding the illusion of the self.

The left brain is the center for language. And not just audible utterances. We also use the left brain when silently talking to ourselves, engaging in the constant interpretation of reality that constitutes conscious thought.

You can think of language as a kind of map-making tool. We use words to navigate the terrain of reality. Agreeing on names for objects and abstractions makes this navigation much easier. For instance, if someone tells you to sit in a chair, you know to look for an object with a seat, a backrest and four legs.

What do the functions of language and categorization have in common? Both rely on our ability to identify and reproduce patterns. 

If you can’t recognize the patterns that govern grammar and conjugation, you’ll have a hard time using language. And if you can’t tell when a particular pattern of letters creates a correctly spelled word, you’ll have no way of differentiating between the categories of written language and nonsense.

You’ve now got a pretty clear idea of how the left brain works. It’s the language center; it interprets reality; it looks for patterns. Together, these functions lead to the illusion that you are possessed of a stable, continuous self.

You know what left-brain consciousness feels like because you’re feeling it right now, as you read this. But what might it be like to approach the world with the right brain rather than the left brain? The case of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, provides some clues.

Discussing right-brain consciousness is difficult. After all, to talk about it we’re forced to use language, and language is a left-brain function. Furthermore, since your ego – the self you’re referring to when you say “I” – is a construct of the left brain, there is no way for you, in the typical Western sense of the word, to experience right-brain consciousness.

In fact, the instant you begin to put words on an experience, you’ve already switched over to left-brain thinking. The only way to understand right-brain consciousness is to experience it – so let’s look at a few ways that you can do that.

The right hemisphere may be the brain’s spatial center, but navigating space is far from the only thing the right brain does. It’s also the source of other forms of “nonconscious” – that is, nonverbal – knowing.

Just take intuition. Now, people who are left-brain dominant tend to explain away examples of intuitive intelligence as silly. When they hear people say, “I suddenly just knew that my friend was hurt, and when I called, he was” or “I don’t know why, but I brought an umbrella with me on a sunny day, and then it rained,” these left-brained folks think one word: coincidence.

In Zen Buddhism, there’s a teaching known as prajnaparamita, which emphasizes a form of knowledge that doesn’t depend on language. It’s possible that this teaching, usually translated as “the perfection of wisdom,” is something that only the right brain can truly understand.

That would make sense. After all, as you now know, the right brain doesn’t work with categories or language; rather, it specializes in taking in the big picture, and is able to discern information that the left brain can’t access.